for more on the sequestration and what it means for the u.s. military. i'm joined by deputy secretary of defense ashton carter. welcome, mr. secretary s let justick up wth tat coent from some republicans that this is exaggerated. >> well, for us in the defense department, unfortunately, it's not exaggerated. in fact, we don't want to take any of these steps. we certainly are trying to do it in the way that does the minimum damage to national security. we don't have a lot of flexibility, and we don't have a lot of time in that regard. sequester requires us to find $46 billion in the last half of the year, and then we have an additional problem with the lack of an appropriations bill, which is a particular problem for us. you put those two things togher, and in some of accounts that fund training, for example, for army units, those accounts are 30% short over the year, and now we only have half the year in which to make up those savings. what that means is we're ging to protect the wars in afghanistan-- we've got to nund them. we have to fund-- need to fun